[PATCH v7 07/16] arm64: kvm: allows kvm cpu hotplug

[James Morse]

Hi Marc,

On 20/04/16 11:37, Marc Zyngier wrote:
> On 19/04/16 18:37, James Morse wrote:
>> It looks like x86 uses the extable to work around this, their vmx_vcpu_run() has:
>>> 		__ex(ASM_VMX_VMLAUNCH) "\n\t"
>> Where __ex ends up calling ____kvm_handle_fault_on_reboot(), with a nearby comment:
>>> * Hardware virtualization extension instructions may fault if a
>>> * reboot turns off virtualization while processes are running.
>>> * Trap the fault and ignore the instruction if that happens.
> 
> I very much like that approach, to be honest. Tearing down a CPU is
> something exceptional, so let's make it an actual exception.
>
> It is now pretty easy to discriminate between KVM functions and stub
> functions thanks to your earlier patch, so if we end up calling the
> hyp-stub because we've torn down KVM's EL2, let's just return an
> appropriate error code (ARM_EXCEPTION_HYP_GONE), and handle it at EL1.

Okay. kexec uses kvm_call_hyp() against the hyp-stub to do the kernel-copy and
hand over to purgatory, but we could change that to a new 'special' builtin
call, something like HVC_KEXEC_CALL_HYP. It never calls it with kvm loaded, so
there is no reason the calls have to be same.

Given hibernate doesn't hit this issue, I will drop this hunk from this version
of the patch, and repost hibernate incorporating the feedback so far. I will
provide a patch for kexec to do the above.



Thanks,

James